STRANGE FRUITS, FORBIDDEN FRUITS, AND
ABJECT FRUITS. METAPHORS OF RACIALIZATION
AND SEXUALITY IN THE AMERICAS
Federico Navarrete
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Strange fruits
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh,
and the sudden smell of burning flesh.
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
for the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
here is a strange and bitter crop.
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The poem “Strange Fruit” written by Abel Meeropol in
1937, inspired by this photograph, and made famous as
a song by Billie Holiday, became an emblem of the fight
against racism in the United States, and a memorial for
the countless victims of lynching in the American south.
Through the disturbing metaphor of the “strange fruit”
the poet and singer were able to speak openly about
this extreme form of racist violence.
One thing is particularly striking about the text:
despite the explicitness of its description of the hangings, there is only one racial reference, in the third
line. However, this passing allusion to a “black body”
(or “bodies” in the renderings of Holliday and Nina
Simone) is more than enough to give the whole poem/
song its profound meaning…
How can the mere mention of the “black” colour of
the skin evoke in most readers and listeners a whole
universe of historical, cultural, racial and even sexual
references?
Following Achille Mbembe (1) we can argue that
“blackness” becomes here a signifier for the centuriesold construction of the Black as a racialized Other. In
this tragic instance, the Black body was saturated with
menacing meanings: the threat posed by the lustful roving Black male to White female virtue, the peril posed
by Blacks in general, particularly young male Blacks, to
the segregated social order of the South, the specters of
criminality and animality frightfully condensed in the
color of the skin.
This is why this hanging body must remain nameless in its “blackness”, individuality has no place here.
The metaphor of the fruit also exhibits the dehumanization to which the “black bodies” were subjected by
those who attacked them so brutally.
The “black body” is a fraught historical construction born out of centuries of racism, enslavement,
segregation, the condensation of countless sexual, social, and physical fears, an object of suspicion, hatred,
and extreme violence. It is, indeed, the “strange fruit”
of a long, sad history.
FORBIDDEN FRUITS
[Las tres razas]
This peaceful painting, generally called “The Three
Races”, but titled “Equality before the Law” by the
Peruvian artist, Francisco Laso, who produced it in the
1850s, seems to represent a completely opposite arrangement of racialized bodies. The White “amito”, the
little lord, plays cards with a young Indian girl and a
nubile Black woman, generally assumed to be his servants. We are in a saloon, the three subjects are decently dressed, their attitude is of modesty and conviviality.
According to his author the scene represented the
desirable integration of the three races that constituted
the “Peruvian nation”. In a programatic text entitled
“The palette and its colours” (2) Laso defended the racial plurality of his country: “One may paint well with
a single colour, but it is better to paint with four, and
there is nothing bad in using thirty colours in the same
palette. According to Art, no colour is superior to the
others. Black, yellow, red and black are equally useful:
if they are combined adequately they will create an harmonious picture.”
He then mocks the “model of democratic liberty
of the United States” because in that country “the humanitarians hunt the coloured races with their hunting dogs.” In contrast, in Peru, democracy has always
existed “de-facto” because the conqueror Pizarro, “a
pig herder”, defeated the powerful Incas and had intercourse with the Indian women, as did other conquerors. He adds proudly: “Afterwards, Democracy further
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THE ARCHIVES OF THE NON-RACIAL
advanced when the Spaniards also mated with their
slaves of African race.”
Peru still lives under this “de-facto” racial democracy, which only needs to be consolidated through further
enlightenment: “If instead of arguing so much about
the epidermis, we provided instruction to Indians and
Zambos (mulattos), just through education, Indians
and Zambos would become White.”
In contrast with his optimistic discourse, Laso’s
painting seems strangely reticent. For starters, the
equality between the races assembled in the bourgeois
salon exists only in the game of cards they are playing: the mere possibility of their being together being
defined by the magnanimous invitation of the White
“amito”. Furthermore, as Mario Montalbetti points
out (3), the players are not really enjoying their game:
the shy white boy hides his face behind a stark black
cap; the virgin-like Indian girl seems stoic and hieratic (a very common way of depicting Indian women
as long-suffering passive symbols of the oppression of
their race); the older and sexually mature black young
woman does display a degree sensuality (and the image
of the Black seductress is another cliché of racism), but
the “amito” pays her no attention.
If we accept that the card game represents the
equality before the law defended by Laso it would seem
that its acceptance necessitates the exclusion of any
other kind of relation between the races, particularly
sexual intercourse, which is why the modest seductiveness of the Black woman must ignored by the “amito.”
Interpreters of the painting have attributed Laso’s
coyness to a personal history of shame regarding the
abuse of Indian servants in his family’s plantation (4).
However, it may also be read as a more wide ranging,
and paradoxical, injunction: if “de facto” democracy
was built upon the sexual predation of White males
STRANGE FRUITS, FORBIDDEN FRUITS, AND ABJECT FRUITS.
“The ‘black body’ is a fraught historical construction
born out of centuries of racism, enslavement,
segregation, the condensation of countless sexual,
social, and physical fears, an object of suspicion,
hatred, and extreme violence.”
on Indian and Black subordinate women, perhaps “de
jure” democracy (the improvement of the races under
a single law) requires the end of these sexual relations.
Thus miscegenation must stop for the Indians and
Black to become White through education, and the rule
of the law. The racialized bodies of the Indian and the
Black women must become forbidden fruits, devoid of
sexuality.
ABJECT FRUIT
[Cortés y Malinche]
This mural painting from 1926 by José Clemente
Orozco, one of the three most famous Mexican muralists of the Post-Revolutionary period presents a more
tragic, arrangement of racialized and sexualized bodies. In this scene, the couple formed by the Spanish
conquistador, Hernán Cortés, and his interpreter and
concubine, the Indian woman Malinche, are depicted
as the “Adam and Eve” of the Mexican mestizo race,
the founding parents of the nation, according to the
interpretation of the painting by the poet Octavio Paz,
the most influential thinker in 20th century Mexico.
Their coupling, however, is not a happy one. Cortés,
whose body seems to be the color of metal, confirming
his identity as a warrior, takes possession of the body
of Malinche in an imperative and overbearing way,
like his war booty. Indeed, at his feet lies the body of a
slain Indian man whose sacrifice is the prelude to the
taking of his woman by the triumphant conquistador.
Malinche’s body is naked and clearly sexualised, but
not seductive. Her dour expression (another instance
of the stoicism attributed to Indian women) is a sign
of resignation and of surrender, not desire. Thus the
conception of the new Mestizo race, is not presented
as a joyful occasion, but as the sad epilogue of defeat
and subjugation.
This bleak reading of Mestizaje is confirmed by
Paz’s interpretation of the historic figure of Malinche
in his paramount work on Mexican national identity,
Labyrinth of Solitude. In a chapter entitled “Children
of Malinche”, the author analyses the Mexican insult
chingar (to fuck, to screw over, to spoil) and defines the
figure of “la Chingada” (a feminine insult much stronger than the “fucked one”) as a paradigmatic female
figure opposed to the Virgin of Guadalupe (the most
worshipped Christian figure in Mexico). La Chingada
“is the violated Mother […] Her passivity is abject: she
does not resist violence, but is an inert heap of bones,
blood and dust. Her taint is constitutional and resides
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in her sex.” He then goes on to argue that Malinche is
the original la Chingada: “the Conquest was a violation,
not only in the historical sense but also in the very flesh
of Indian women. The symbol of this violation is doña
Malinche, the mistress of Cortés. It is true that she gave
herself voluntarily to the conquistador, but he forgot
her as soon as her usefulness was over. Doña Marina
becomes a figure representing the Indian women who
were fascinated, violated or seduced by the Spaniards.
And as a small boy will not forgive his mother if she
abandons him to search for his father, the Mexican
people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal.
[…] When he repudiates La Malinche, the Mexican Eve,
as she was represented by José Clemente Orozco, the
Mexican breaks his ties with the past, renounces his
origins, and lives in isolation and solitude.” (5)
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This deeply misogynistic interpretation deprives
Malinche and all other Indian women of their agency;
their will and desires. Their fascination or seduction
have no value in the face of the absolute male power
of the Conquistadores (and, also, the discursive power
of the writer who condemns them). They can only be
chingadas (fucked ones, destroyed ones), betrayers,
thoroughly abject and despicable.
These are not the strange fruits of the threatening
male “black bodies”; nor are they the forbidden fruits
of the modest well behaved Indian and Black young
women invited to play the game of equality at the table
of their coy White master; they are the abject fruits of
racialized and sexualized subordinate women who deserve to be raped and discarded by their conquerors,
despised by their children and even insulted by high
minded poets.
These three bitter fruits of the racial history of the
Americas show us the tragic limits of non-racialism in
societies constituted by discrimination and colonialism: in the first the sexualised bodies of young Black
males must be destroyed to preclude any risk of miscegenation; in the second, the sexuality of the Black
and Indian females and the White males must be suppressed in order to achieve formal equality; in the
third, mestizaje can only be conceived as a brutal victory of masculine power over subjugated and degraded
feminine Indian bodies.
101-106, available in http://books.openedition.org/
ifea/1172.
Montalbetti, Mario, “Ante un cuadro de Laso”, in Revista
Psicoanálisis, 5, http://www.revistapsicoanalisis.
com/ante-un-cuadro-de-laso/, seen on August 1,
2014.
Majluf, Natalia, “Francisco Laso, escritor y político”, in
Aguinaldo para las señoras del Perú y otros ensayos
1854-1869, Lima, Instituto Frances de Estudios
Andinos, 2003, pp. 13-49.
Paz, Octavio, The Labyrinth of Solitude, New York, Grove
Press, 1994, p. 80-88.
REFERENCES
Mbembe, Achille, Critique de la raison nègre, Paris,
Éditions de la Découverte, 2013.
Laso, Francisco, “La paleta y los colores”, in Aguinaldo
para las señoras del Perú y otros ensayos 1854-1869,
Lima, Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos, 2003:
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